Conventional panning procedures to prepare hard coatings generally work with sucrose, but recent advances in panning have allowed the use of other carbohydrate materials to be used in the place of sucrose. Sucrose proves to be detrimental for teeth and causes dental caries due to easy formation of acids. Therefore coatings are nowadays increasingly made of sugar-free compositions.
The appearance of the coating is sometimes affected by the crystallisation difficulties. To obtain good hard coatings, even crystallisation must occur during application and drying.
EP 0 201 412 describes a confectionery or pharmaceutical product provided with a hard sugarless coating obtained by hard coating using a maltitol syrup having a dry matter content from 50 to 70% by weight, the said coating being essentially crystalline and comprising at least 90% by weight of maltitol.